Consistent graphics driver crashing solely on ESO

Gazash · July 2014

Hi guys,

Was there a small patch that my client downloaded today? Or am I imagining this?
Anyway, my graphics driver seems to have developed an issue with ESO. It was fine when playing all day yesterday, not a minutes trouble.
Since my client downloading and installing a patch (at least I think it was a patch), I keep getting graphics driver errors and the game gets closed. The problem seems to be occurring mainly a the character load screen. It will load to my character selection screen then error out. Sometimes it will let me choose my character then crash on the following load screen. And sometimes it will even load me into the world, and then crash shortly after.
I have tried all the obvious solutions. I rebooted my pc. I checked for graphics driver updates (none available). I ran the ESO Launcher repair tool just to see if it would make any difference, it didn't.
My graphics card is an Nvidia GeForce GTX780Ti with the most up-to-date drivers.

So I'm at a loss. Any help would be massively appreciated!
Regards,
Gaz.

Daethz · July 2014

Might be a stupid question but are you sure your drivers are official directly from nvidias website originally? (Only originally because I use geforce experience for updating now)

Elf_Boy · July 2014

ESO stresses my gpu more then any other game I have on my system tight now. Including, gw, gw2, right, lotr, 86 steam games and a bunch of non steam games.

Those pretty awesome textures and graphics have a cost in GPU temperature. If your overheating it will cause a driver crash.

Who makes your GPU? Do they have a utility for monitoring tempts in real time?

How much ram in your gpu?

You can try forcing open gl or dx 9 and see if that helps (open gl has some definite issues on the pc side)

Gazash · July 2014

Daethz wrote: »

Might be a stupid question but are you sure your drivers are official directly from nvidias website originally? (Only originally because I use geforce experience for updating now)

It's a brand new pc as of Saturday. I searched for updates using the GeForce experience app, but no updates were found so I assume they must have been dedicated Nvidia drivers.

Elf_Boy wrote: »

ESO stresses my gpu more then any other game I have on my system tight now. Including, gw, gw2, right, lotr, 86 steam games and a bunch of non steam games.

Those pretty awesome textures and graphics have a cost in GPU temperature. If your overheating it will cause a driver crash.

Who makes your GPU? Do they have a utility for monitoring tempts in real time?

How much ram in your gpu?

You can try forcing open gl or dx 9 and see if that helps (open gl has some definite issues on the pc side)

I know what you're saying but what I don't understand is it ran perfectly fine all day sunday to have crashes on tuesday night, having played monday night also with no problems. So I'm not convinced it's an overheating problem. Also, it was crashing on the character selection screen, loading screen from character selection to world, and a few seconds into being in world (of which I was stool in a bank), I wouldn't imagine those scenarios to be too taxing, certainly not taxing enough to cause an overheating scenario.
It's an MSI card, I'm not sure about real-time monitoring but I will check this out. The fan on the card doesn't appear to be stressing out to keep the gpu cool though, it spins harder once it's been shut down (continued cooling post shut down).
It's a 3gb gpu.
It's just a strange coincidence that this all started to happen after a small patch that was downloaded yesterday pre game launch.

Syntse · July 2014

Couple things you might try... uninstall and reinstall the gfx driver. If same continues, try uninstall and install previous version of the gfx driver.

Gazash · July 2014

Syntse wrote: »

Couple things you might try... uninstall and reinstall the gfx driver. If same continues, try uninstall and install previous version of the gfx driver.

That is on my list of things to do this afternoon. I find it strange that it only misbehaves with ESO and not any other games though. Warframe (Steam), Skyrim, World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, all problem free. Just seems to be ESO. But I will try a driver reinstall and see where that leads me.

Thanks.

Jade1986 · July 2014

Gazash wrote: »

Daethz wrote: »

Might be a stupid question but are you sure your drivers are official directly from nvidias website originally? (Only originally because I use geforce experience for updating now)

It's a brand new pc as of Saturday. I searched for updates using the GeForce experience app, but no updates were found so I assume they must have been dedicated Nvidia drivers.

Elf_Boy wrote: »

ESO stresses my gpu more then any other game I have on my system tight now. Including, gw, gw2, right, lotr, 86 steam games and a bunch of non steam games.

Those pretty awesome textures and graphics have a cost in GPU temperature. If your overheating it will cause a driver crash.

Who makes your GPU? Do they have a utility for monitoring tempts in real time?

How much ram in your gpu?

You can try forcing open gl or dx 9 and see if that helps (open gl has some definite issues on the pc side)

I know what you're saying but what I don't understand is it ran perfectly fine all day sunday to have crashes on tuesday night, having played monday night also with no problems. So I'm not convinced it's an overheating problem. Also, it was crashing on the character selection screen, loading screen from character selection to world, and a few seconds into being in world (of which I was stool in a bank), I wouldn't imagine those scenarios to be too taxing, certainly not taxing enough to cause an overheating scenario.
It's an MSI card, I'm not sure about real-time monitoring but I will check this out. The fan on the card doesn't appear to be stressing out to keep the gpu cool though, it spins harder once it's been shut down (continued cooling post shut down).
It's a 3gb gpu.
It's just a strange coincidence that this all started to happen after a small patch that was downloaded yesterday pre game launch.

Go to the NVidia website, re download and install the most recent driver. I had this EXACT same problem on SWTOR recently, te driver was corrupt, works fine now

. Apparently drivers can corrupt easily.

Gazash · July 2014

laced wrote: »

Gazash wrote: »

Daethz wrote: »

Might be a stupid question but are you sure your drivers are official directly from nvidias website originally? (Only originally because I use geforce experience for updating now)

It's a brand new pc as of Saturday. I searched for updates using the GeForce experience app, but no updates were found so I assume they must have been dedicated Nvidia drivers.

Elf_Boy wrote: »

ESO stresses my gpu more then any other game I have on my system tight now. Including, gw, gw2, right, lotr, 86 steam games and a bunch of non steam games.

Those pretty awesome textures and graphics have a cost in GPU temperature. If your overheating it will cause a driver crash.

Who makes your GPU? Do they have a utility for monitoring tempts in real time?

How much ram in your gpu?

You can try forcing open gl or dx 9 and see if that helps (open gl has some definite issues on the pc side)

I know what you're saying but what I don't understand is it ran perfectly fine all day sunday to have crashes on tuesday night, having played monday night also with no problems. So I'm not convinced it's an overheating problem. Also, it was crashing on the character selection screen, loading screen from character selection to world, and a few seconds into being in world (of which I was stool in a bank), I wouldn't imagine those scenarios to be too taxing, certainly not taxing enough to cause an overheating scenario.
It's an MSI card, I'm not sure about real-time monitoring but I will check this out. The fan on the card doesn't appear to be stressing out to keep the gpu cool though, it spins harder once it's been shut down (continued cooling post shut down).
It's a 3gb gpu.
It's just a strange coincidence that this all started to happen after a small patch that was downloaded yesterday pre game launch.

Go to the NVidia website, re download and install the most recent driver. I had this EXACT same problem on SWTOR recently, te driver was corrupt, works fine now . Apparently drivers can corrupt easily.

Just got back from work, and I'm going to give this a whirl right now

Thanks.

Gazash · July 2014

Well.. that didn't solve it...

Jade1986 · July 2014

Gazash wrote: »

Well.. that didn't solve it...

Did you choose custom and a clean installation? If not, it will not work. You must do a clean installation.

Gazash · July 2014

I appear to have found the problem @laced‌

The solution provided by @Lovreone‌

Try editing this file C:\Users\<Username>\Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\live\UserSettings.txt . Change the line from "SET GraphicsDriver.7 "D3D11"" to "SET GraphicsDriver.7 "D3D9""

Syntse · July 2014

Gazash wrote: »

I appear to have found the problem @laced‌

The solution provided by @Lovreone‌

Try editing this file C:\Users\<Username>\Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\live\UserSettings.txt . Change the line from "SET GraphicsDriver.7 "D3D11"" to "SET GraphicsDriver.7 "D3D9""

So forcing to run with DirectX9 instead of DirectX11, in that case it might be the DirectX causing the issue for some reason. However if it works then don't touch it. Think ESO was done for DirectX9 and is minimum requirement so no need to try something else unless clear performance issues start to appear.

Seravi · July 2014

Welcome to the NVIDIA bug that has been around since Beta. I run DX9 due to the crashes as well.

Elf_Boy · July 2014

Gazash wrote: »

Daethz wrote: »

Might be a stupid question but are you sure your drivers are official directly from nvidias website originally? (Only originally because I use geforce experience for updating now)

It's a brand new pc as of Saturday. I searched for updates using the GeForce experience app, but no updates were found so I assume they must have been dedicated Nvidia drivers.

Elf_Boy wrote: »

ESO stresses my gpu more then any other game I have on my system tight now. Including, gw, gw2, right, lotr, 86 steam games and a bunch of non steam games.

Those pretty awesome textures and graphics have a cost in GPU temperature. If your overheating it will cause a driver crash.

Who makes your GPU? Do they have a utility for monitoring tempts in real time?

How much ram in your gpu?

You can try forcing open gl or dx 9 and see if that helps (open gl has some definite issues on the pc side)

I know what you're saying but what I don't understand is it ran perfectly fine all day sunday to have crashes on tuesday night, having played monday night also with no problems. So I'm not convinced it's an overheating problem. Also, it was crashing on the character selection screen, loading screen from character selection to world, and a few seconds into being in world (of which I was stool in a bank), I wouldn't imagine those scenarios to be too taxing, certainly not taxing enough to cause an overheating scenario.
It's an MSI card, I'm not sure about real-time monitoring but I will check this out. The fan on the card doesn't appear to be stressing out to keep the gpu cool though, it spins harder once it's been shut down (continued cooling post shut down).
It's a 3gb gpu.
It's just a strange coincidence that this all started to happen after a small patch that was downloaded yesterday pre game launch.

3gb vram is decent and likely more then enough unless you have a 4k monitor.

I saw an official post in a another thread that we should avoid staying on the character select screen as it has a significant memory leak.

Elf_Boy · July 2014

Syntse wrote: »

Gazash wrote: »

I appear to have found the problem @laced‌

The solution provided by @Lovreone‌

Try editing this file C:\Users\<Username>\Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\live\UserSettings.txt . Change the line from "SET GraphicsDriver.7 "D3D11"" to "SET GraphicsDriver.7 "D3D9""

So forcing to run with DirectX9 instead of DirectX11, in that case it might be the DirectX causing the issue for some reason. However if it works then don't touch it. Think ESO was done for DirectX9 and is minimum requirement so no need to try something else unless clear performance issues start to appear.

One of the big things about dx11 (if your card supports it in silicon) is that it provides significant bonuses to rendering speed. It has other eye-candy as well. Dx 9 will do a good job, if it works dx 11 does a great job.

You can go to the ms web site and download dx9 and/or 11 and re-install too.

Dont bother trying to uninstall first, per MS DX makes too many changes to too many files for it to be able to be uninstallable.

c0rp · July 2014

This issue has been around before. Is happening to me again too, starting tonight. AMD R9 user. When I close ESO my graphic card crashes and I have to restart PC. When loading up ESO my 2D screens (log in screen, loading screens) tear and jitter constantly.

KBKB · July 2014

Im going to hazard a guess you are over clocking your gfx card turn it back to normal.

c0rp · July 2014

Black-Bird wrote: »

Im going to hazard a guess you are over clocking your gfx card turn it back to normal.

No, nothing I've done causes the issue. It IS an an ESO issue . It is specific to ESO only, and was resolved by a patch previously when enough people complained about it. Now it's back again. All the 2D screens are tearing and the gpu crashes when you exit ESO, forcing a PC restart.

Gazash · July 2014

Ok so... I've still not solved this one, so here's what's been happening this week!

I’ve had my pc a week now and I’ve been experiencing on-going graphics issues since it arrived. When I’ve had time I’ve been trying to work around them and figure out what’s actually going wrong but so far I’m getting no where.

Spec is as follows:
Intel Core i7 4790K CPU OC to 4.4GHz
Corsair H100i Water Cooler
Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1 Motherboard
NVidia GeForce GTX780Ti 3Gb Video Card
16Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR3 2400Mhz Memory
Samsung 840 Evo SSD 250Gb
Seagate 7200rpm 2Gb HDD
24x DVD-RW
Corsair RM850W PSU
Running Windows 7 64bit

The problem I’m experiencing appears to be driver related. I’m mainly playing Elder Scrolls Online but the problem persists with any game I’ve tried to play so far. In Elder Scrolls, if I edit the User Settings file and set it to run on D3D9 (DirectX 9), I can get it to run, although it does have graphics glitches where it will drop output to the displays for a second or two, then resume. If I set it to run on D3D11 (DirectX11), as soon as I get past the character selection screen and load into the world, it crashes.
It then gives me an error in my Windows System Tray saying “Display Driver has stopped responding and has recovered. Kernel Mode Driver, 337.88 stopped responding and successfully recovered”.
I’ve been running the MSI Afterburner Software as a means of monitoring the graphics cards temperatures and usages, and it doesn’t appear to be out of tolerance anywhere which leads me to think it isn’t a hardware related issue.
Some recordings of recent gameplay:

If you look at the GPU Usage statistics, where you see the GPU usage drop is where it would drop display for a second or two and then pick it up again. But it’s quite frequent.
Even under the most strenuous graphically demanding situations I’ve encountered so far the GPU never went above 65°. I have generated a custom fan curve that have the fans come on with more power sooner, but it saved around 5° over the default fan control settings.

I have tried to run 3DMark 11, and the 3DMark Demo (Available from Steam).

3DMark 11 went as follows:
Installed and loaded the software. Set it to benchmark tests only, on centred view. Pressed “Start” and it immediately turned off display. Giving the monitor the “Input Not Supported” screen that floats about, so I’m guessing that’s a resolution issue? But I couldn’t correct it as I only downloaded the Basic version and didn’t upgrade to the paid version. So, with no results, this was an unsuccessful test.

3DMark Demo went:
Installed and loaded software. Clicked on “Run all tests”, and it started to work, then crashes out with the System Tray video driver error I had before.

So, the list of things I’ve tried to correct the problem.
1. Updating drivers using GeForce Experience.
2. Updating drivers manually by uninstalling drivers using Windows Task Manager first.
3. Uninstalling drivers using Windows, installing previous driver versions.
4. Installing latest Beta version driver.
5. Updating DirectX (But the installer wouldn’t let me because the version I have is equal to, or newer than the installer).
6. I’ve checked the XMP settings in BIOS. Already set to enabled so I left it at that.
7. Reinstalling my games.
8. Custom fan curve (though I imagine this is having no effect in relation to the problem I’m having).
9. I’ve checked DxDiag and it reports no problems.

So, to sum up. Won’t play games without crashing. Won’t run 3D Mark benchmark tests. Graphics driver crashes. And I’ve run out of ideas...

I should stress that this problem is not just limited to ESO as I'd previously thought. I tried to play Warframe today and the video card drivers kept crashing.

p_tsakirisb16_ESO · July 2014

Gazash wrote: »

Hi guys,

Was there a small patch that my client downloaded today? Or am I imagining this?
Anyway, my graphics driver seems to have developed an issue with ESO. It was fine when playing all day yesterday, not a minutes trouble.
Since my client downloading and installing a patch (at least I think it was a patch), I keep getting graphics driver errors and the game gets closed. The problem seems to be occurring mainly a the character load screen. It will load to my character selection screen then error out. Sometimes it will let me choose my character then crash on the following load screen. And sometimes it will even load me into the world, and then crash shortly after.
I have tried all the obvious solutions. I rebooted my pc. I checked for graphics driver updates (none available). I ran the ESO Launcher repair tool just to see if it would make any difference, it didn't.
My graphics card is an Nvidia GeForce GTX780Ti with the most up-to-date drivers.

So I'm at a loss. Any help would be massively appreciated!
Regards,
Gaz.

Download MSI Afterburner.
Set a very aggressive fan profile curve to have 65C at 100% fan speed.
Turn off from game the Ambient Occlusion. That feature alone taxes the system a lot.

I would bet that you use W8.1 also yes? I had similar issues with you on both my GTX780 and my GTX780Ti with TESO since beta.
Overheating to hell, and driver crashing. Usually was doing it on the first time I loaded the game, a system reboot was fixing the issue thought and was running fine for hours.

I downgraded to W7 64bit, and the game hasn't crash at all for more than a week now since done the windows downgrade. At least now I can use SweetFX also, which along with the ESO Launcher making the game looking stunning, without much impact hit. Even Cyrodiil in Zerg against Zerg the system copes without getting bellow 40 fps!!!! either.

Jade1986 · July 2014

I recently started having this problem as SOON as I downloaded the newest patch, it didn't just happen for ESO though, it happened at random times during web surfing and playing SWTOR as well. I was dead convinced it had something to do with overheating, or a piece of my hardware going bad, but I did every diagnostic / stress test (including the "torture test") under the sun and run CPUID HWmonitor to see temp, voltage, etc. Everything was in the norm. I went to the NVidia website and reinstalled my graphic driver, did nothing.

What DID work was COMPLETELY removing the graphic driver, as in, completely uninstalling it and all related components. Resetting the PC, downloading the graphic driver again, installing it with clean installation, and then restarting pc again. So far so good. We will see if it helped.

Seravi · July 2014

I did a fresh OS install with EVERY driver I tried and STILL if I run DX11 ESO will black screen and crash my video drivers. I am forced to run at DX9 to play this game. Every game I have works fine on DX11 except this one.

CS has tried and tried to find the issue and cannot. They have worked with me many hours and still the only way I can play is running DX9..

Elf_Boy · July 2014

Can you let me know please the type of Monitor(s) your using and the default resolution (and if you play at non-default that as well)

I also missed, please let me know your OS version (I assume x64)

Please right click on the desktop and go to: screen resolution -> Advanced Settings -> monitor -> and report the refresh rate there for your monitor(s).

I have noticed that ESO will lose/gain monitor sync and I enter and leave the game and full screen.

One thing that could be causing your momentary losses of signal could be a program in the background trying to give a notification, new update, thermal warning, windows update avail, whatever. Please check your system tray for any possible offenders and try playing with them disabled to check if that resolves anything.

As for MSI Afterburner, Riva Tuner, and the like. They are useful tools, I have found that they do not always play well with others, City of Heroes (may the ncsoft board get boils and carbuncles on each and every sensitive body part for closing it) for example would crash will all such tools. Other games and apps have done so as well.

Seravi · July 2014

I have two monitors, Dell S2409W 1920x1080 and SyncMaster 1280x1024 both at 60 hertz. I play on the Dell monitor in windowed full screen. I cannot run fullscreen as it will cause graphic driver crashes. I run Windows 7 Ultimate x64 for my OS. I don't have anything running that would cause an update notifcation during play. I made this entire system an ESO ONLY system after the first free week of game play was spent being down all the time due to the black screen. I didn't install anything other than ESO on this system so there would be no question about what was causing ESO to crash working with CS.

OmegaSeven · July 2014

I had issues with my previous video card crashing with ESO. I ended up finding out my video card was simply defective. When I contacted EVGA about it they told me to underclock my video card to find out if my video card was defective or not. So I suggest underclocking your card and if the crashing stops and it plays fine then it is simply because your video card may be defective.

When I switched and got a MSI Gtx 760 video card I have no video card crashes now.

Edit: Forgot to mention my previous video card was a EVGA GTX 650 Ti

ZOS_HugoP · July 2014

Greetings @Gazash

Could you please make sure that you turn off any overclocking of your hardware at first.

Then go to your Nvidia Controls panel, and under the tab 3D settings please do the following:

Got to "Configure Surround, PhysX", and on the "PhysX settings" panel, you should be able to choose your preferred graphics processor, make sure the option auto-select is chosen.
Then, go to" Adjust image settings with preview" and from the 3 choices available choose "Use my preference emphasizing" and set it to performance

You should now go to the Stereoscopic 3D tab, and under the settings please make sure that it's disabled.

We also recommend not using Beta drivers, if you still have one installed please considering downgrading to the latest final version.

If your issue is still occurring we invite you to contact Nvidia customer support for more assistance.

Elf_Boy · July 2014

It's looking like a bad card to me too at this point.

HugoP has a few good suggestions. If that does nothing RMA it.

Not being able to play in full screen is just bad. You could try taking the smaller monitor off the system for testing I doubt however that will make a difference.

Elf_Boy · July 2014

What kind of cable are you using? HDMI? DVI? VGA? Display port?

RinaldoGandolphi · July 2014

Just a suggestion, but did you check your power supply with a multimeter?

the gtx 780 and 780ti require at bare minimum a 600 watt 80 plus certified power supply that has 41 amps on the 12v rail.

total watts is not the determining factor, amperage on the 12v rail is. A power supply not able to consistently deliver the rated power can cause a gpu driver to crash, can cause artifacting, and even cause the gpu to fail prematurely.

if your having problems in other games too after cleaning drivers and reinstalling I would check you power supply to make sure its capable of delivering the rated power.

Gazash · July 2014

@p_tsakirisb16_ESO - If you check my post previous to yours you will see I've done everything you suggested. The GPU never goes above 65°. I'm running Win7 x64

@laced‌ - I have tried what you recommended regarding uninstalling/reinstalling drivers using exactly the same method as yourself. To no avail.

@Elf_Boy‌ - I'm running 2x HP w19 monitors. Running at 1440x900, 60Hz on DVI cables for both. I'm running Windows 7 x64. There is nothing running in the background that would cause any notifications to pop up, other than the graphics driver failing. And the problem I was having occurred before I started using MSI Afterburner to monitor my system. I'm starting to think it may be a defective card also. I've already emailed the company that supplied the pc to me to get the ball rolling.

@ZOS_HugoP‌ - I will try these settings now and report back. Is it likely that changing these settings would also affect gameplay of other games as well. As in, changing these settings would affect the computer and not individual games? Also, afaik, it is only the CPU that is overclocked, I don't think the GPU or RAM have been altered in anyway, but to be sure, how do I underclock/downclock to check what you have asked me to try?

@woodsro‌ - I haven't checked that but now that you've mentioned it I definitely I will. I have read other articles on the internet related to power supply issues regarding these cards. But surely the company the supplied the pc to me (a week ago) would know this and build the pc accordingly? But, I will check these details anyway just to be sure.

Thanks for the response guys, much appreciated!

Gazash · July 2014

@ZOS_HugoP‌ - I've changed the settings you recommended. I was unable to find anything relating to Stereoscopic 3D but when installing the graphics driver I selected it not install the 3D parts, only installing the graphics driver itself and the Physx driver. Would this explain why I can't find it? I'm about to try some gameplay and see how it goes....